EU gives Poland two months to scrap changes to its highest court

The EU executive has issued a stark warning to Poland to scrap changes to its highest court which critics say trample over the rule of law, but stopped short of calling for sanctions on the member state.

Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the European commission, gave the Polish government two months to rewrite proposed amendments to the country’s constitutional tribunal that some say will put Poland on the road to autocracy.

“We do believe there is a persistent problem with the rule of law,” Timmermans declared on Wednesday, saying he was representing the Polish people as well as the EU. “I will not drop this issue; we will pursue this issue until we have a solution.”

Timmermans, who opened an investigation in January using the EU’s untested rule-of-law procedure, said it was only fair to give the Polish government more time to solve the problem, as new legislation had recently been introduced.

But he was clear the issue was far from solved: “We do believe there is a persistent problem with the rule of law.”

The Dutch commissioner could still recommend Poland be stripped of EU voting rights, but this unprecedented punishment is unlikely to win unanimous support from EU member states, who must take the final decision. Hungary’s strongman leader Viktor Orbán has already vowed to oppose the move.

The European commission had planned to debate Poland’s rule of law in January, but the discussion was moved forward after an escalation in the standoff between the ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS) and opposition forces.

At the weekend, police in the Polish capital forcefully removed demonstrators, who were blockading the entrance to parliament in protest against government plans to curb media freedom and weaken Poland’s highest court.

The staunchly conservative PiS has been on a collision course with Brussels since it introduced sweeping changes to Poland’s institutions. Shortly after PiS came to power in October 2015, the Polish parliament rushed through a raft of legislation that critics said increased executive control over the constitutional tribunal, the highest court in the land. An expert commission that advises the Council of Europe said the changes endangered the rule of law, democracy and human rights.

The EU debate came days after the country’s most senior judge – Prof Andrzej Rzepliński, the outgoing president of the constitutional tribunal – said Poland was “on the road to autocracy” and accused the PiS of a systematic attempt to destroy oversight of government activity.

Rzepliński, whose term expired on Monday, said the government was attempting to destroy the court, leaving only “a kind of private council for our ‘beloved leader’”, a reference to Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of PiS.

Rzepliński is expected to be replaced by a PiS appointee, putting Poland’s most important institutional check on executive power in the hands of the governing party.

On the eve of the debate in Brussels, Poland’s president suggested the government was ready to climb down on restrictions to media access. Andrzej Duda, who is backed by the PiS, is attempting to defuse the standoff. He said he had received a pledge from PiS leaders not to restrict media access to parliament, in what appeared to be a victory for the activists who have staged protests since Friday.

In October, PiS also retreated from a total ban on abortion, following street protests by thousands of women dressed in black in Warsaw, Gdańsk, Łódź and other Polish cities.

The EU executive gave Poland an official warning in January that changes to the constitutional court could violate the rule of law, stepping up the pressure in July when it gave Warsaw three months to make changes to guarantee the independence of the constitutional tribunal.